“Now with back-to-back wins and a booming Ohio economy, this party maverick with a reputation for plain talk is stirring up all kinds of White House buzz,” he gushed in his intro.

Good God, George, I know that Sunday Morning Hackery has become an American Institution, but did Kasich’s team write this line for you? Ohio’s booming economy? Party maverick? Plain talk? Cripes.

Of course, this is all part of the show, and not George’s show: John Kasich’s long stroll down the GOP presidential primary catwalk.

When Stephanopoulos asked Kasich to acknowledge what everybody already knows about his unslaked thirst for the presidency, he said, “Well, George, well, look, you know, you knew you were never going to get a good answer out of me here today.”

Yes, sadly, a lot of us have come to expect no good answers from Kasich any day, on any subject. And though good answers Kasich may be short on, patronizing platitudes, he’s chockablock.

Barack Obama won the presidency on that message in 2008. And as soon as he got into office John Kasich’s Republican Party cynically exploited those divisions in every way they could, opposing him on everything, big and small, far and wide.

They went about their roles in government as legislative arsonists. They tapped the nativist veins, with all the old poisons, infecting as many national conversations as they could, and skipping away merrily.

And while Kasich has been willing to play obstructionist and turn down free money for high-speed rail, he went “party maverick” by accepting free money for Medicaid expansion.

So John Kasich will attempt to appropriate the Obama “unity” rhetoric by way of the McCain “maverick” bromide while counting on Americans not to notice the blinding zirconian hypocrisy in his political diadem.

Unity Maverick John Kasich, on the catwalk, on the catwalk. Do your little turn on the catwalk.

“In Ohio, I think what works best is when everybody feels like they have a chance, that everybody who has grievances can be heard,” Kasich said.

What say ye, Ohioans with grievances? Do you feel heard? Do the teachers, police officers, firefighters, and union members who have lost their jobs under Kasich’s budget cuts feel heard?

“And that’s what we’re doing in the state, trying to lift everyone,” he said.

As far as I can tell, the only time Kasich successfully lifted everyone was when he signed Senate Bill 5 and we rose to repeal that Koch Brother-driven, anti-collective bargaining law. Quite a bit more voters turned out in 2011 to vote that down than turned out in 2014 to re-elect him.

“We want everybody to at least have the sense that somebody listens to them and that there’s a place for them in our society,” Kasich said.

A place for everyone, and everyone in their place. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry. The Ohio Department of Development privatized, and racked by scandal in the hands of Kasich’s corporate cronies. The general assembly under the thumb of the state-by-state bribe-and-conquer campaign.

“We helped the mentally ill,” he said. Yes, after $93 million worth of cuts to mental health services in Ohio between 2009 and 2012, including under his first state budget, John Kasich used expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act—the law his party promises to repeal—to give a pittance back.

“We’ve helped the working poor,” said Kasich, who oversaw reduced benefits while the family poverty rate in Ohio didn’t budge, and the number of children living in poverty increased under his watch to one in four.

David DeWitt is a journalist and universal minister based out of Athens, Ohio. He has also written for Government Executive online, the National Journal’s Hotline, and The New York Observer’s Politicker.com. He can be found on Twitter @TheRevDeWitt.

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Good lord, Stephanopoulos flat out lied to butter up Kasich? “Booming Ohio economy? Where? That handful of minimum wage jobs? Maybe Stephanopoulos could have asked him about how he raised taxes on ordinary working people to pay for a tax break for his buddies, how he robbed public schools to ship money to for-profit charter schools run by his campaign donors that are now burning down in a wildfire of scandal? Maybe he should have asked him about his reckless spending, his increase in secrecy in his administration, his tendency to push divisive agendas like his anti-choice measures and then act like he had nothing to do with them. Maybe Stephanopoulos and others should take note of the fact that winning reelection against a radically underfunded opponent who was destroyed by the GOP lapdog media in an off-year where turnout was unfavorable to Democrats does not mean Kasich is some kind of golden boy. Kasich help the working poor? Laughable. Talk is cheap to this arrogant little man and Stephanapoulos degrades himself by humoring him.